SERC Reliability’s Board of Directors has appointed its first three independent members following FERC’s approval earlier this year of bylaw changes aimed at making the body “more strategic, efficient and effective.” (See FERC Approves SERC’s Bylaw Changes.)

Shirley Bloomfield, Lonni Dieck and Deborah Wheeler will join the board effective Jan. 1, 2021, the same date the new bylaws take effect (RR20-2).

Of the three new directors, Dieck has the most direct utility experience, having served as senior vice president and treasurer at American Electric Power from 2008 to 2019 — part of what SERC notes as “37 years of financial experience, primarily in the utility industry.” Currently, Dieck serves as treasurer of the board at Ronald McDonald House Charities of Central Ohio and on The Women’s Fund of Central Ohio’s board.

Bloomfield is the CEO of NTCA – The Rural Broadband Association, a trade association representing small telecommunications companies operating in rural and remote communities. She has been with the group and one of its predecessors, the National Telecommunications Cooperative Association, for more than 30 years. Bloomfield also serves on the board of the National Rural Telecommunications Cooperative and GlobalWin, a professional association representing women in the tech industry, and has previously worked as a senior executive at both Verizon Communications and Qwest Communications International.

Wheeler has served as chief information security officer at a number of companies, including Ally Financial, Fifth Third Bank, the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp. and, since 2017, Delta Airlines. She also serves as governing board chair for Evanta’s CISO Forum in Atlanta and works as an adviser at software companies Proofpoint and Forcepoint.

“This is really an exciting moment for SERC as we continue a governance transformation that will improve the reliability and security of the electric grid,” board Chairman Greg Ford said in a press release. “The addition of three independent directors is essential to our continued strategic growth and will help to provide a balanced, independent perspective to our stakeholder expertise.”

With the appointments of Wheeler, Dieck and Bloomfield, SERC now meets the minimum required number of independent directors for its board under the new bylaws. The board is required to have 15 sector representatives and may have up to five total independent directors.

Other structural changes in store for SERC next year include:

• requiring that a majority of the board, as well as a majority of the independent directors, be present to have a quorum for meetings;
• eliminating the use of alternates and proxies for directors;
• formalizing SERC’s membership body by transitioning the existing board structure into a members group, which will include a representative from each member company and meet at least annually to advise the board on the business plan and budget, elect independent directors and approve bylaw changes as needed;
• changing the Board Compliance Committee into the Board Risk Committee; and
• adding a Human Resources and Compensation Committee, Nominating and Governance Committee, and Finance and Audit Committee.

Implementation measures include revising SERC’s Regional Reliability Standards Development Procedure (RSDP) to reflect the new structure by, among other things, removing references to board representatives and alternates and replacing references to the SERC Executive Committee with the board. NERC earlier this month posted the revised RSDP for stakeholder comments, which are due by 8 p.m. Nov. 20. (See NERC Opens Comments on SERC RSDP.)